Cool video and channel. Thanks for posting!
TLDW:
[It was a cool attempt that may have spurred mobile Linux devs in an important way. Removable battery + hardware switches for communication subsystems were genuinely innovative and in tune with community interests. Also it was bad. 8 year old CPU, software that was trying to do everything everywhere all at once, cameras that didn't work then technically did. Pine64 still exists and the Pinephone Pro is a thing (that the presenter hadn't tested).]
Presenter was generous when describing the end product. It seems to me like they want to like it but came to the same conclusion as most did -- it's definitely not a daily driver. That said, it doesn't have to be to remain a cool product.
Do give them a watch though if you have a chance. This is from a <1k subscriber channel and was well put together.
I'm convinced Pine64 has no idea how to make an actual usable product.
I wasted my money on a PineTime watch. And it's basically only useful for telling time, because as soon as you try to use any smartwatch features, the battery life basically disappears. Firmware updates are horrendously slow. The device has like 5kb of storage and 4kb is used by the base firmware, so when I thought I could program my own features for it because it's open source, it was severely mistaken. Not to mention that if I'm not particularly amazing at programming for this device I either destroy the battery life or brick it.
On the watch front I opted for the Bangle.JS 2. The abstraction to everything being JavaScript can be annoying, but takes away some foot guns for tinkerers who don't want to optimize lower level code.
It is difficult to have a smart watch though. Think about it: you have a small chip with a wifi stack, bluetooth, even a camera slot, it consumes ~5mA when awake even when down clocked, but can at least save power by consuming ~1microA when asleep but it can never use its sleep states because it's primary function is to display and update the time at all times.
All because of a little boy, who won't let me sleep!
Dang, I see this as I'm waiting for my pinetime to arrive. On paper it seemed okay, and the latest versions seem to have improved the battery life. Will see once I receive it
I don't think creating, or even working towards, usable end products is their goal. I'm not actually sure what's up with Pine64, they made the most sense to me when I first heard of them as an also ran to Raspberry Pi. There's lots of those and they all make an equal amount of sense.
Yes updates are slow, but keep in mind that the developers are all volunteers.
Currently the PineTime is a glorified step counter, but with the next update (should be 1.15, I hope) we'll get background heart rate monitoring. The PR is shaping up and will hopefully be merged before the next release.
Basically they didn't even try to design good hardware.
